This may not help because every journey is different but in case it does …
When I first transitioned, my gaming friends were my first safe space whereas the world at large was a source of acceptance anxiety for me.
I seem to have recently travelled through an acceptance inversion point.
Since I returned from America, in every aspect of my life – travel, shopping, socialising, dating, mixed gaming – I’m seen and treated as a woman. No anxiety, no dysphoria. The only time I struggle now, weirdly, is with my old gaming friends. They were the first to accept me and they gave me a safe space to live and continue as if my gender change made no difference at all. 25 years of baggage and history however means the way they act around me remains largely unchanged, ie as if I’m still a guy in an all-guy environment (ie cue the burping, farting, swearing, testosterone).
As such, it’s tricky when I start to withdraw due to reasons that aren’t readily apparent. They’re not acting any differently than before. But that’s the issue. If you wouldn’t do it in a room full of women, don’t do it if I’m the only woman in the room. If you do, I’m not being treated as a woman and that is a dysphoric kick to the teeth.
Base level acceptance is wonderful, of course. Social behavioural change that imbues that acceptance with genuine authenticity is the ultimate, and it makes such a difference.
New-to-me games played recently include …
3 CHAPTERS (2024): Rank 2763, Rating 7.0
Neat little card drafting game where, in the first chapter, you collect a hand of 7 cards (7 Wonders style), in the second chapter you play a trick-taking game for 2 pts per trick won, but keeping your cards because in the third chapter you score all the cards you’ve drafted. They’ve nearly all got effects that score in various ways, eg for each of this icon played (either in the trick in chapter 2 or in your hand in chapter 3), or when played together with another card, and so on. The aim is to draft a high-scoring hand obviously and there’s a bit of luck drawing into nice combinations, lovely when it happens, but mostly it’s do the best you can and see what happens because it’s all over in 15 minutes but definitely fun along the way.
Rating: 7
DEAD RECKONING (2022): Rank 396, Rating 8.2 – Clair
Take the Mystic Vale card sleeve mechanic and ramp it up into a 2 hr Euro-trash affair of moving around a Caribbean map, exploring, acquiring card sleeves to improve future turns, picking up treasure, building forts for points, dropping cubes to claim map majorities for points, fighting NPC and other player ships for benefits, heading back to base to buy techs, and so on. Choose your own style. The fighting is a cube drop in a tower which gives a decent idea of the randomness. I enjoyed the deck crafting very much, but the game did go way over-long and your enjoyment is going to depend on whether your style meshes with the others at the table.
Rating: 7
DON’T LLAMA DICE (2021): Rank 3503, Rating 6.6 – Knizia
This is the dice version of Llama and my recommendation is in the title. It replaces the decision to play a card with dice rolling to match your cards, which will obviously be randomly good or bad and that’s about it. Llama is light but it plays faster and at least you can make occasional decisions on how to play your hand which gives you a sense of agency. Here, not so much. Roll well, do well. Don’t roll well, don’t do well. Just … don’t.
Rating: 5
GRACHTENPAND (2024): Rank 8321, Rating 7.1
Cute game of building colourful houses. Add a card from a ground deck, floor deck, or roof deck to your hand, place a card in your tableau, pass your hand to the left. All the cards have either icons or scoring conditions for its house (ie if it contains these icons). Hope you draw into cards that match what you’ve already got, try and build a big single colour area for points, hope your RH neighbour gives you good stuff, be mindful of what to pass if all things are equal, and put roofs on your houses! Do the best you can with what you get for 20 minutes or so and see how it plays out. Easy and pleasant fillerly goodness.
Rating: 7
MEADOW (2021): Rank 209, Rating 7.7
Each card you build in your tableau requires that you must already have all its required icons in play. So you’re continually building, which then changes what’s buildable. It’s made trickier because each turn within a round gets more restrictive on what cards you can pick up. It’s played with a quiet focus, aiming to maintain flexibility but with your icon requisites top of mind. And sometimes the cards just don’t come when you need them and your game is sub-par for a while requiring new plans. It’s a nice mid-weight Euro, just a little long for what’s essentially a card collection game with icon complications to manage.
Rating: 7
PASSWORD (1962): Rank 6436, Rating 6.1
Old-school word game played in teams. There’s a word to be guessed. The designated clue-givers for each team alternate giving one-word clues until one team guesses the word. Start again with a new word. It’s all pleasant enough, but there’s too fine a line finding a clue that helps your partner but not the other team based on shared life experiences which drags the game out if people care too much for the win. Which isn’t quite to my taste.
Rating: 6
PHANTON INK: ARCANA (2025): Rank 15141, Rating 7.8
Similar to Password, trying to guess the secret word, but here the guessers of a team give their clue giver a secret question and the clue giver spells out an answer that best describes the secret word, letter by letter until the team think they’ve got it and say stop, hopefully before the other team work out what the clue word is. Alternate turns until there’s enough half-spelt clues to work out the secret word. While I can see it being attractive to some for its cleverness, I found it slow and frustrating, not knowing what was going on half the time and not enjoying the challenge of guessing it out.
Rating: 5
THE SIX OF VIII (2024): Rank 7246, Rating 7.4
Interesting team trick-taker where trump changes over the 12 tricks (through each of the 6 colours) on a set schedule. It makes the pass to your partner beforehand feel more consequential than usual, as well as each discard (especially in the first half of each hand) as the importance of each colour waxes and wanes. I’m not sure whether the continual-change-of-trump schtick is gimmicky or meaningfully different, but I’d certainly like to explore further to find out.
Rating: 7
Thoughts of other Opinionated Gamers:
Tery N.: Like Alison, I have had some interesting gaming experiences based on my gender. Unlike Alison, I haven’t had anyone engage in burping etc., but rather am excluded from gaming sessions so the guys can just be guys with other guys. I guess now I know what it is they do during those sessions. . . . .
I played Don’t LLAMA Dice with Alison and she is right – just don’t. The company was lovely, but there is not much game there. I think giving it a 5 is exceedingly generous; I don’t usually rate my games but if I did I think I’d give it a 1. There is just too much randomness with zero control or reward. I don’t love LLAMA the card game either, but at least I feel like I have some agency there, rather than the dice just playing me.
At the other end of the spectrum is The Six of VIII. I love this one. The theme is well-applied, and the changing of trump throughout the hand is fascinating to me. You have to be constantly adapting your strategy based on the play of others as well as the special cards that come into play, and you have to be aware of what has already been played. The puzzle of that is something I really enjoy.
I am also a fan of Password, as long as you play it with the right people. I like word games in general, and this one has the right level of tension and I enjoy the balance of creativity and finesse involved. I haven’t played it in years, though; when we played my partner was often a good friend who has since passed away, and I don’t think I have played since then. I have a big box of an amalgam of different sets, and I really should bring it to the next gaming event I go to,
